Total Lipedema Care

I am writing to express my disappointment with the recent experience I have had. I initially had a PPO insurance plan and clearly communicated my intention to use this insurance for my appointments and procedures. Unfortunately, my experience has been marred by several issues:

1. **Communication Delays: ** After four months of no contact, I finally heard back from their insurance department. They claimed not to have received my insurance package, requiring me to resend it.

2. **Denial Letter Delay: ** Subsequently, I received a denial letter, but it took an additional three weeks for any action to be taken to appeal this denial.

3. **Insurance Limitation: ** I was informed that their center only submits claims to PPO insurance providers. However, I have since switched to an HMO insurance plan, which I was told your center does not work with, despite my HMO covering out-of-state care.

This experience has left me feeling like the center's commitment to "wanting to help everyone with Lipedema" may not align with the reality of your insurance practices. I urge you to reconsider your approach to insurance acceptance to ensure that individuals with different insurance plans can access the care they need.

I will have to agree with Jessica's review above from 2 years ago. Communication with this surgery center is awful. I see now that it has not gotten any better in the last two years. Had I known about the experience I would encounter, I probably would have made other choices. What started out to be a relief to finally be able to have Dr. Jaime Schwartz as my surgeon (after combatting with my insurance company for 2 years and then having to switch to a different company who is "in-network" with TLC), turned out to be something I never would have expected. The office staff is very dismissive, will take a message, and there will be no response. The medical assistant does not give clear information, changing what she says multiple times on you, and if you try to email, you'd be lucky to get a response 3 weeks later. I personally was told by her that I had to buy the post op compressions from their center for "liability reasons" when I told her that I already had compressions that I could use for post-op. During the 1st surgery, I ended up having to pay $590 for 2 pairs, that I never received reimbursement for, due to the "MASTERBILL" being insufficient, per my insurance company. When I came back in for the 2nd surgery and explained the situation to Dr. Schwartz, his assistant tells him she did not say that and then tells me to use the compressions that I have. Another very upsetting situation that I experienced with this surgery center was in regards to their aftercare policy. I have to recommend to any future patients to be very careful and clear of the information you receive from the medical assistant or any staff that you may encounter. I was told that per Dr. Schwartz policy that I had to pay for a 24 hour Aftercare Facility or Nurse if I wanted high volume lipo. If not, I can just be picked up by my personal caretaker or family member after surgery and go straight to my hotel. I ended up paying $1700 for aftercare for each surgery. After receiving my medical records from the office, which took over two months and multiple fax and call in requests, I found out that there was no high volume lipo done. Almost $4000 that I didn't have to spend and I am still having trouble receiving the reimbursements for it. As Jessica also stated, consider any help with reimbursements or insurance issues to be void. They will not help at all. I sent in pictures via Touch MD each month in order for TLC to see the new growth of Lipedema. Not to mention, that no post op care was followed up with me, except for the 1 month mark after the first surgery and 1 time after the 2nd surgery. Two scheduled appointments were missed by the nursing staff, with an excuse of "being with other patients". At that point, I just gave up on it. My knees, calves, outer thighs, and hips are inflamed with Lipedema. I look and feel worse than I did prior to the surgeries.
After emailing the medical assistant on multiple occasions to explain that I am disappointed about how I have been treated, given false information, high volume was not taken out, and I'm in constant pain, an appointment was scheduled to speak with Dr. Schwartz. The conversation was short and unproductive. I explained everything above. Instead of Dr. Schwartz giving some suggestions to solve my concerns, he spent most of the time defending his work and telling me that "there is no way that I still have Lipedema" in my body. He "gets it all out". Wow! I didn't know that there was actually a surgeon who can get all the Lipedema out. Now that's a breakthrough that everyone should know about. Come on now. That's not even realistic. I'm just very disappointed because I had a lot of high hopes and faith in Dr. Schwartz. I spent a lot of time advocating his work to my insurance company and in reality, it's not the case for me. I now need revision surgery and have to start from the beginning. I am however very glad that there are other ladies who have better experience with TLC and the relief of being without the pain.